漬けっぱなし

My Japanese housemate has completed his New York sojourn, and left me with this surprise - a fermenting pot for making nukazuke pickles 糠漬け. (He was using it for the bento he brought each day to the Metropolitan Opera, where the Japanese Culture Ministry paid for him to be a "creative content intern" - he got to watch "The Enchanted Island" from conception to completion, lucky bastard, along with a dozen other old and new productions.) Nukamiso is a mix of rice bran with kombu and fermenting bacteria (perhaps introduced with vegetable peels early on, but then self-sustaining). Once started you can apparently keep using it to pickle vegetables forever, like a sourdough starter. As you can see he left some cucumbers and daikon as models. A gift that keeps on giving! The only catch is that the nukamiso should be mixed each day, preferably with bare hands...!